


Shoot You Down

by TikolaNesla



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Betrayal, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 02:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19843918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TikolaNesla/pseuds/TikolaNesla
Summary: After two decades of silence, Céline comes back into Natalya's life.





	Shoot You Down

**Author's Note:**

> My writing's a little bit everywhere at the moment so I thought I'd properly start on this story. This first chapter's actually been hanging around for a while but I wanted to hang onto it until I knew where it was going. Which I do now. Mostly.  
> As well as MonaBela, this fic has some past EstBela and FraPort, but as of yet I think that's all it'll have ship-wise.
> 
> Names:  
> Céline - Monaco  
> François - France

Twenty years had taken their toll on Natalya Alyakhnovich.

There were lines etched into her face and veins in her hands. Her hair was the same lightning-white, her eyes the same black-blue, but the saturation had been turned down on her just a little. When they were younger, she could sit on her hair with ease. If needed, she could tie it up so that you couldn’t tell it passed her shoulders until you looked closely. Now it barely grazed the nape of her neck. It suited her.

Céline didn’t look her age, she made a great deal of effort not to, but Natalya looked exactly her 43 years and wore them well. She was as beautiful as when she left her behind. Age hadn’t softened her edges. The same razor-sharp mind shone through her eyes. The anger in her brow, though- that had only sharpened.

That, she supposed, was all her own fault.

This bar suited her. Aging men with too many tattoos, the pungent smell of beer and blood and tobacco in the air, so thick you could taste it. Grim yellow lighting. Football on a screen in the corner. Nothing had changed.

She was a touch too neat for it, but she still looked as prepared to fight as anyone there, cleaning her nails with a knife in spite of the stack of empty shot glasses in front of her. She was alone in the corner, with her back to the wall. Steeling herself, Céline hovered next to her.

How was she supposed to start? What could she say? Words she’d rehearsed in her head like the lines of so many plays left her the very moment she needed them. Natalya didn’t look up from her knife. 

So it was to be improv.

“Natalya.”

She stabbed the knife into the wood so hard that it buried the blade right to the hilt. “De la Fontaine.” One could only imagine she was seeing Céline’s chest in the table’s place. 

“How have you been?”

“Before or after I got out of prison?”

“Surprise me.”

“Prison was as expected. Got my sentence extended. You stab one neonazi and suddenly you’re a criminal.”

Hesitantly, she took the seat next to her. “You stabbed someone?”

“Yeah. She said the prison uniform wasn’t my colour so I stabbed her.”

“Really?”

“No. I stabbed her because she was a nazi. As it turns out, if you stab every nazi you meet in prison, you only end up with a life sentence and a lot of white supremacists who don’t like you.”

“That’s fair. What about after?”

“Became a new woman. Cleared up my act. Got an honest job and a husband. Had a kid. He’s 4. Villem.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I know. Awful. His dad named him, don’t look at me.”

“Not the name, I just… can’t imagine you living the detergent ad lifestyle.”

Natalya laughed without laughing. “Me neither. Didn’t last. Not even a year. Well. The job and the shiny new lifestyle at least. I failed a drug test so I reckoned becoming a dealer probably had some sort of ironic, poetic… whatever. The husband and the kid stuck around until about two months ago. Divorce is still in progress. What about you? Where’ve you been?”

“Paris. I was an actress. Theatrical, not film.”

“Glamorous.” She was carving into the table now, taking little slices out of the wood. 

“Yes, it is. I’m staying with François for the time being, but it’s nice. Spotlights and men with too much money.”

“Men? Times really have changed.”

“Don’t be absurd, I’m only scamming them.”

“My mistake. Suits you. You always were a snake.”

The two women sat in silence for a moment. Neither looked the other’s way until Natalya spoke.

“Twenty years.”

“I’m sorry-”

Natalya shot up from her seat and grabbed her by the throat, leaving the knife embedded in the table. She drove her through the bar, plowing through old drunks and knocking over chairs in her wake. “ _ Sorry?  _ Twenty years, Céline! I was in prison for thirteen of them!”

She slammed her against a wall. Céline couldn’t speak. She could hardly breathe. Natalya’s hand was tight on her neck, lifting her a little above the ground. 

“You left me to die.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

Natalya dropped her, but she immediately struck Céline so hard across the face that her glasses skittered across the bar’s grubby wooden floor. 

“Bullshit.” Someone jeered them on, in words misogynistic enough for Céline to shoot him a look, but not enough to stop Natalya beating her face in. “You just wanted to fuck off with the money.”

“We were cornered, Natalya.”

Natalya grabbed a fistful of her hair. “I  _ trusted _ you.”

She threw her to the ground. Céline, for a moment, was aware that her clothes probably shouldn’t be touching the floor of this place, but she decided there were bigger things to worry about.

Natalya bared her teeth to the onlookers and snatched her knife from out of the table. “You done gawking, John?”

She stormed out of the pub and into the biting northern air, chewing on her middle fingernail. She should have killed Céline then and there. She should have kept her hand tight around her throat, squeezed until her bones cracked and her pretty blue eyes lost the life behind them. She would have gone back to prison for it, sure, so what? She’d be alive. Céline would be dead.

And yet she hadn’t.

Why hadn’t she?

She supposed it wouldn’t be enough of an ending. To kill her and leave it at that. What then? There was always the day after the murder. The day you’re alive and she’s dead and there’s nothing left to do. She needed Céline to  _ suffer _ .

Looking back, she’d had an opportunity to do it. Back in the courthouse, when she was younger. She could so easily have given her up.  _ Yes, I had a co-conspirator. Céline Fabienne de la Fontaine. She was the mastermind. This wasn’t her first robbery either. I can tell you her former address, her credit card number, her family’s entire history, her favourite colour, and the name of her first pet. Good luck finding her, your honour.  _

Another in a long list of regrets. It would have been so easy. It would have helped her, too. A little honesty never hurts in court. If she’d made her out to be the leader, she could have even got a little trimmed off her sentence.

But she’d been young. She’d been naïve. She’d been in love with her, even after all that. A part of her had fantasised about her sweeping her off her feet and breaking her out of prison. She’d been so fucking stupid. 

But she wasn’t 23 anymore. She’d seen what good fantasy did her. Dwelling on what wasn’t wouldn’t do a thing to her. She had to find another chance to destroy her. No more wishing. Céline had to burn.


End file.
